In some people’s minds "urban Indian" is a contradiction in terms. From certain perspectives, "Indian-ness" belongs in a romantic past and evaporates (or is "contaminated") upon contact with "civilization" and modernity. We are expected to play the role of nature to Western culture. At the same time, however, many of us are new to cities and have had to negotiate our relationship to them. Artists like Jeff Thomas have created new models for understanding and speaking about our experience in cities, uncovering or creating an Aboriginal presence here. While many of us retain connections to home communities, finding space for ourselves in the city is an open-ended, creative challenge. Are there histories here to recover? What new directions will our cultures take in this environment? What do we stand to gain or loose? How might art explore the creative potential as we negotiate our identities in the present?

—Richard W. Hill

Panel participant biographies:

Moderator Richard William Hill is an independent critic and curator. He teaches courses in Aboriginal art history and contemporary art at York University and is associate editor at FUSE Magazine.

Arthur Renwick, a participating member of the Haisla First Nation and Gallery 44, was born and raised in Kitimat, British Columbia. He is a graduate of Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver (1989) and received an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal (1993). He has curated art exhibitions at The Power Plant in Toronto and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. His artwork has exhibited nationally andinternationally, and is represented in many private and public collections, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and the National Gallery of Canada. Currently, he resides in Toronto and teaches part-time at the Ontario College of Art and Design. His artwork is represented by Leo Kamen Gallery.

Jeffrey M. Thomas is an Iroquois/Onondaga photographer, curator, and cultural analyst, born in Buffalo, New York and now living in Ottawa. His personal photographic practice is concerned with showing the perspective of an urban Iroquoian person. Thomas’s research explores various historical cultural resources in order to bring voices, stories, and perspectives into the present. He is also an internationally-recognized consultant in the interpretation of historical and contemporary aboriginal cultural materials. His work involves close readings of anthropological photographs and practices, as well as the recovery of cultural identity. He has works in major collections in Canada, the United States, and Europe including such institutions as the National Gallery of Canada’s Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, and the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne.